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Project Bundling Webinar Series

Project Bundling for Local Public Agencies

December 16, 2020

https://connectdot.connectsolutions.com/pnzdwwoogkxu/

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you first landing by and welcome to the EDCS/5 project bundling for local agencies call. Participants are in a listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session. If you require assistance during the call, please press star then zero. I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Dan D'Angelo. Please go ahead.


Thank you for the opening remarks. Welcome to four of six webinars scheduled in the webinar series. We have planned a second series of webinars. Stay tuned for those announcements. Not to worry if you missed the first three webinars. Those are available at the website and the file in the file share pod you can download has a link to those previous webinars. This webinar is also being recorded and will be available for those that could not join us today to watch at their leisure. As the operator mentioned, please keep your phones muted in computer makes muted if you are not asking a question. We will be taking questions after the presentation. You are also welcome to enter any questions in the chat pod.


The operator will also open up the phone lines at that time to take questions over the phone if you prefer to ask them live.


I would like everybody to enter their name and email address in the chat pod. Particularly if you want a training certificate. Please indicate that so we have an idea of where to send those certificates to. We need your email address for that.


The last observation is if you would like the presentation displayed, if it is not large enough for you, you can click on the four arrows in the upper right-hand corner to make the presentation larger.


Let's get started here. The other thing I need to mention is the disclaimer on the screen. These presentations have several great speakers. Is being co-presented by the administration research Associates Nebraska realty in the city of Oakland, Georgia. The views and opinions expressed are not reflective of the policy. There of the organization and the person speaking. Moving forward, our presentations today, we have four speakers that will be providing the content today. The first one is from Mayo Garcia, part of the FHWA office of infrastructure. He is one of the co-leads of the EDCS initiative. Last next up will be David Unkefer. He is the co-lead on this initiative . Following David, we will have Mark Traynowicz, the statewide bridge engineer from Nebraska D.O.T.. We have a great project that they will share their experiences with a state agency working with the local government. We are helping out local governments and using private funding to achieve efficiencies. And finally, Jason Spencer from the city of Oakwood in Georgia which is the greater Atlanta area. He is the public works director for the city of Oakwood. He is going to talk about how he worked with neighboring cities and got together with them to bundle paving projects. And I am Dan D'Angelo, I am the supply research associate supporting FHWA and this initiative and previously in some years with the New York State Department of Transportation.


Today's agenda, remail will talk more about why project funding, why we should be advancing project funding and what it means. David is then going to follow that with case studies. There are one or two sides of great examples we have across the country of local governments needing project funding. Area County in New York, the state of Pennsylvania and their local bridge programs and in the state of Iowa. That will be followed by Mark and how they utilize project bundling to award those grants in the state of Nebraska. Then, followed by Jason who will talk about his efforts in partnering city in the Hock County Georgia. Then we will end by going through resources available to help all agencies advance their project bundling practices.


Remail, I am turning this over to you. Let me know when you want me to advance the slide. And thank you for taking the time here.


Thank you, Dan. Greetings to all. Again, the focus of this webinar is on project bundling for local agencies. So, supply bundle project bundling can streamline environmental analysis, design, contracting and construction. It allows agents to capitalize on scale, increase efficiency and supports greater collaboration during project delivery and construction. It saves costs. Project bundling our shared features for design expertise and achieves the economies to scale. Project bundling delivers strategic program solutions by streamlining various project delivery requirements, such as environmental agreements and standardized designs. And it saves resources. Using the single contract award for several similar projects, like time and construction and safe procurement time.


What is project bundling? Project bundling is a process by which a single contract award is used to deliver multiple presentation and rehabilitation on replacement projects. Project bundling can be considered for all types of assets and can be combined with other innovations, such as alternative contracting methods and value capture. It may involve innovation, funding and financing strategies to address a variety of programs noted in this work cloud and much more. And the concept of bundling has been around for some time and may have been called by different terms such as consolidating, tying, aggregating. It's both old and new to transportation. Bundling is a newer term but has not been used in a strategic and symptomatic way. The next few slides will describe more advanced strategic advances to project bundling. It comes in many shapes and forms. We will talk about some of these during this webinar. However I would like to share clarifications about bundling projects. So, project bundling provides opportunities for all sized firms. In other words, nobody gets left out. There are large bundles and small bundles. Their opportunity to subcontract up to 50 to 70% of the work, depending on individual state requirements. By regulation, states must provide opportunity to all sized firms. Project bundling doesn't change anything. Next slide.


Additionally, DBT requirements on bundling projects are the same as with any other project. There are goalsetting considerations. There are contracting considerations, depending on the size of the contract, and there is monitoring. Again, project bundling doesn't change federal requirements and there is opportunity for all. Nevertheless, we will focus special attention to the small business elements of project bundling. For now, I wanted to share this clarification very briefly.


The next few slides will describe some need agency case studies.


I am with the federal highways co-lead on the project on the EBC initiative. I just wanted to begin by saying that local public agencies and tribes are a key audience for part project bundling. Federal highways would like to better support the initiatives these groups are making. Whether there are federal dollars or not. If it is just about saving, doing things smarter. By trying to take advantage of a common scale. So, we just want you to know that we see a lot of opportunity for local public agencies. You will hear about that.


So, maybe the message of a lot of this is how can you elaborate? Whether it be local to local, or state and local collaboration. I am going to cover case studies that provide a national picture. Then I'll turn it to our guest presenters from Nebraska and Oakwood.


The first case study to bring to your attention is Erie County, New York. I think the story is a preventive maintenance approach. A lot of bundles were done in different ways. But Erie County, on a regular basis, has built a preventative maintenance bundling program, where they focus on different work pipes that help them get contractors that can do the same type of work very effectively. So, they have this arrangement where they put 1 million in steel repairs, 1 million in deck repairs, money and bridge washing and money in deck ceiling. With preventative maintenance, they are trying to get ahead of the worst first approach to the way that they manage their bridges and try to use bundling to assist that. And the key element here is to try to collect and bundle the projects based on work type. But also based on locations to some degree. Although they do use countywide contracts at times. They also have their D.O.T. as a partner. D.O.T., because of their interest in keeping ridges it good. Sometimes contributes 15% to cover the local match. It's kind of a good partnership. And when they do these projects with federal funds, they submit them to the New York State D.O.T. with a preventative maintenance plan that demonstrates getting more for their dollar.


The next example is the quality nation, the tribes have a different model, or at least this is a different model, where they are combining not just road projects, but vertical and horizontal our road projects together. In an effort to try to attract more competition in areas that are fairly remote. It has really worked well for them. I also combined their projects under alternative contracting approach that allows them to put the projects out faster and with higher production levels, because they are using a method called construction manager general contractor, where they can be the bring the contractor on early to provide them advice and basically tried to combine some of the and overlap some of the design and construction activities.


The next example is Pennsylvania local bridge bundling, which is PennDOT pilot projects. In this case, PennDOT works with their locals in three counties. They were able, through bundling, to complete design and construction in less than 18 months. And, the way that a key element of bundling you will hear over and over is to try to use similar work types. In this case, they combined bridge replacements and one contract, super construction replacements of one and rehabilitations of another. Not only did they say dollars in construction, but they save even more dollars on their design. That is another method we want to share is that the savings is often in the preconstruction if you can figure out ways to bundle and do things like standardized design.


The final example I have is the Iowa competitive highway bridge program. This was federal funds that I will competed for and won. And so, in this case, it was ceded by a federal program that required bundling. In order to accomplish this, Iowa D.O.T. group called local systems is leading a coalition of 50 agencies. Really, the messages partnering. But do you really need federal funds here? Do you need a competitive highway bridge program? It helps, but you will hear from Oakwood, Georgia that they are able to create their own partnering. I think with leadership, local agencies can do that and realize how many needs the scale. Hello? I thought I heard someone on the line.


This project included 77 bridges that were bundled into 30 contracts that had it two to five bridges each. It's not like they are bundling -- in DC in the graphic there, the bundles. It's not like one big bundle that precluded similar contractors and multiple bundles. They did it carefully so they were able to address issues within the state that was much pressing. It is a great example of partnering, a group that provides leadership to put this effort together to compete for these funds. I think it can also be done at the state or local level as well. I think that is all for my case studies. I am going to turn it to Dan.


Thank you, David. I was listening and asking pull questions this morning. We went through our second round of pull questions. What I'm going to pull up as the initial poll questions. If participants could respond, not only do we want you to think about things you can do, but also provide their support activities. We will take a minute here or to for people to have a chance to respond to these two questions. We have too much questions for you. We will do it after the Nebraska presentation before Jason asked the second round of questions. Who have you done it with we heard great examples of different agencies. And then what are your biggest concerns. Or issues you have with bundling that may be challenges you are facing. I am not sure if there are no issues or concerns. Or if you have got to that question yet we are trying to tailor the new sources and assistance that FHWA can provide to addressing these concerns. Funding always helps to look at the program data just mentioned. A jurisdiction. Mark is going to talk about that. The challenges they faced early on and how they worked it out with MO use.


How about another 10 seconds for people to get in their responses. Then we can open the scroll back up if you like at the end. I will have two more questions after the Nebraska presentation. It seems so easy a concept. It can be challenging. All right. I am going to close the polls. We can open back up at the end if you have more thoughts. Let's go back to the presentation. Thank you everyone for responding. Much appreciated. Next up is Mark Traynowicz, the engineer in the state of Nebraska. He will tell us about lessons helping the safety. Mark, it's all yours.


Great. Thanks. I appreciate that. It looks like there were just three or four counties that had bundled with other counties. Hopefully after my presentation, you can give more thought into doing those types of guidance. What I want to talk about is we have a program called County bridge program. It started in 2016. We have been going for a little while now. And I just want to tell you why we are doing it and what we are doing. The program really isn't technically a bundling, project bundling program but in the first four years of the program, out of the 85 projects that have been awarded funding, 71 of those have been included bundled bridges. And then the bridges, and we are not talking humongous thing. These are two tonight bridges and bundles. Within MO 71 projects, 37 of them were where multiple counties works together to bundled bridges across county lines. In those projects, they were 2 to 4 counties per project. I guess what I want to stress really here is what we are doing in Nebraska at smaller scale. So, if you thought about bundling interests that we just don't have the kind to bundle like some of these bigger state projects have done, I guess I'm here to tell you anyone can do this. I believe it is good for everyone to do.


In Nebraska, why was the program needed? We have got over 15,000 bridges. We are 16th in the nation for a number of bridges. At the time we were fifth in the nation for numbers of instruction for court bridges on the county side, there were 11,000 that are owned by counties portion of fourth cousin over 50 years old. About 1800 restructure efficient and a couple hundred of those were closed. You can see we had a problem and we needed to figure out a way to make it better. So, the next two slides, I will not read these all but the this is the big statue. Within about four paragraphs, sets of the County bridge match program in Nebraska. This is a program that the state of Nebraska will put Steve up to $40 million to promote innovative solutions to replace deficient bridges on the county road system. It is specifically written that we need to look for innovation. We need to be deficient bridges and be on the countywide system. It goes on to say one setting of this program and in consultation with county officials. This is just a program where the state D.O.T. says okay, we are going to tell you where your bad bridges are, we are going to fix them, repair them and give you a bridge. It is a match program that is in participation by the counties. It's a voluntary program. If the county isn't interested, they don't have to be part of it. But, we are seeing a lot of participation. The program terminates June 30 of 2023. Up to $40 million in the seven year program.


This just shows the working group. So, when we formed the County bridge match program, we went out and partnered with counties. We have seven county officials on the working group and for people from the Nebraska Department of Transportation. As we sat down and talked about expectations, it was interesting because at the beginning, the counties came in and had a different interpretation then we had as a state. The first meeting or two, we had to figure out what the program was about and how to make it good for everybody.


What happens when you have a selection process? Every fall, we send out a request for proposals. The counties have about eight week to submit proposals. Those come back to the state. When we started, we had about 2200 deficient bridges on the county road system. So they were able to select any of those bridges. We can figure out where the worst purchase was in the state on the county system. We didn't know if that was something the counties were interested in taking care of. It may have been a poor bridge on a road that never gets used. We really leave it up to the counties to select which bridges it is they feel are the biggest need. Then, we get six weeks to score the proposals. In January, we announce the selected projects. Right now, we are in the fifth round and we have gone proposals in for this year. And we are just in the process of scoring those. So really, the four is right at the top. Innovation is 20%. If you go down, the significance of that bridge and project is 20%. We have a need, which is the percentage of proficient bridges in your county compares to the percentage of efficient bridges across the state. Then we have an equity number. We know as the program went on and more counties got funding, we wanted to keep equity in it. If a county hasn't gotten any funding through the program, their equity points would be 20. If they had gone a lot, if they were one of the top that got funds in the first four rounds, there would he would be zero. It's a way to keep more people interested and spread the money out to more counties.


Here is where the innovations come in and here is where the bundling comes in. When our director was talking to state senators and having hearings on this before it became statute, you really talked about the program and a way to get funding to counties. He really hit on bundling wasn't a way to do that. A way to get more work out there and just a good way to get economical and efficient projects. When we look at innovations, we are looking at efficiency. We are looking at anything like lower cost and making it better or faster. One of the biggest innovations happening is a bundling of bridges and also counties working together. Before this program, I don't know if we have any can counties. Hey, I have a bridge that looks like yours, why don't we get together? We will hire an engineer and have the engineer design both bridges and then put it out as a bundle or a shared contract.


This program is a seven year program. When we started, we got through counties in Nebraska. We know we had counties that were doing good things and we had other counties that had lots of experience with people. It is a competitive program. The counties need to look at what other counties are doing. We hope that it is working out. That as the program goes long, more counties are doing more things like some of the more efficient counties are doing. We are reaching out and bundling bridges. They are doing work with county forces. We have had a lot of bridge removals. Over 11,000 bridges on the county system, some are not needed. We have roads on every mile in Nebraska, and there are roads where we have to realize we can't afford to keep them all going. We even bundle removals together, maybe a removal with a replacement.


I think if we had a catchphrase, it would be your bridge, your way. So, when a proposal gets selected, the department signs an agreement with the county. If it's a multicounty, say there are three counties that work together on this bundling project, the counties will come together and sign an interlocal agreement between the counties to decide how they are going to work together. And then we as a department sign individual county agreements with each county. The first year, we tried to have a lead County. We only sign an agreement with that lead County. We tried to pass the money down to the other counties with this bundling project through the lead County and found that was difficult because of budgeting for that county and for the other counties. Imagine if you are the lead County and a multicounty proposal and you were getting this funding. Whether it's for the state or federal government. Then you had to distribute it for other counties. It just didn't work within their budgeting system. We were able, for the next year, we made the improvement. One thing about this program, it is very dynamic. We set it up quickly. We realized there would be rough patches along the way, but we are making improvements as we go. We are making improvements every year, I think. So, the interlocal agreement between the counties themselves is a very important agreement. Then basically it is up to the county. The counties develop the plans, they require all the permits. They work on the project and oversee the construction. The program is 55% of the construction process, up to 200,000 per bridge. It is a matching program that can share cost between the state and the county.


Just quickly on some of the cases, so you can see. Here is Nebraska. The circles I have are the three bundled projects -- three of the bundled projects we had. Like I said, we had 71 across the state. These are just three of them. Same here, you can see the older bridge on the right. These are actually concrete past culverts when the three cats got together. We said hey, we have a similar problem and similar bridges in close proximity to each other. We've got a good case here to get one contractor. These counties need to reach across the county.


You can see the engineer's cost estimate and the construction expense there. This was a savings from an estimate of about 15%.


Here is a similar one in three different counties. You know, similar looking type of bridge. They got together and chose to do a similar thing. Just because I'm showing concrete box that's the only thing we bundle. We bundle smaller bridges. Still cost savings.


Here is an interesting one. We have two counties small bridge locations and what these counties did, instead of putting in something that looked like a bridge, they put in multiple pipes. This is something we are doing in Nebraska, the counties are doing in Nebraska quite a bit. It gives you you have to look at your hydraulics. This is a good way to pretty expensively report replace bridges. If you have minimally traveled roads or minimal roads, this is a good way to get traffic across those roads multiple COVID pipes and then the counties are able to install these themselves. Part of some of the bundling we have done is there may be two or three counties that do these types of projects. Where one county has done these by themselves in the past and they reach across county lines and help the other counties. It is just a shared experience.


To recount from the program, and the first four years, we have replaced or removed 254 bridges. 71 of the 85 proposals had a some sort of bridge bundling in them. Again, a small project, 2 to nine bridges through the counties. So, $60 million of county match bridge program, or state funds, we generated a total of about $34 million of total bridge construction. In the first four years, it has been pretty significant for us. These are bridges in the 20 to 40 foot range. Some are a little bigger, but just in that range.


If you want to look up what we are doing, we have a great website. Just go to the Nebraska D.O.T. website and search for County bridge match program. We have a lot of good information out there. We have some interactive maps. You can actually go, there is one on the left that is kind of cricket, you can see the proposals. What we have done is any of the proposals that get selected then become public information. Any of the other counties can see what the counties have gotten and awarded funding proposed. The hope is those counties see it and say I want to do something similar next time. It really is about as we go, all the counties are getting better at doing these things because they are some of what the more efficient counties are doing. So far, it's been a really good program. It is still alive and well and working out very well.


If we have time for questions, I have got time. It's a little hard to see my email address. Also, Jodi Gibson is our local assistant division manager. She couldn't be with us today. She is in a different meeting with the Federal Highway administration. She is a great resource as far as interlocal agreements and working directly with the county. Dan, if you have time for questions, that's fine. If not, we can wait until the end.


We definitely have time for a question or two. Before we jump to questions, some people seem to be having trouble with their audio. Everything sounds good on my end. Sometimes it may be better off using the phone. The phone number is in the Chad. You may want to call on the phone or recall if you are having trouble with the audio. Most people seem to not be having problems.


There was one question that came in the chat pod. Can you give the constructions for opening up the phone lines while we take the chat pod questions?


Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. A voice prompt will indicate your line is open. Please state your name before asking you questions. Start one for questions. We will posit a minute for the queue.


I will take chat pod question question what delivery method you are utilizing on these projects. Or what are the delivery methods you allow?


Right now, it is all designed for big build. We do allow design build in Nebraska. It was the same statute and the same bill that passed with the county match program allowed alternate delivery methods. But, the county just hasn't done that yet. I think once that happens, I think they will like it. They just are not there yet. It is all designed big build. We have got one project on the stateside that we are in process of doing right now. So far, it is just the one.


As a follow-up, and do you want to recommend which projects lend themselves to design build? Or do you have an opinion?


Of course you want to have similar sizes, similar types is very good. I think if you can keep them -- you know, in Nebraska, we are talking a 20 mile radius is a good thing. You definitely want to look at environmental considerations or permitting issues, if some seem the need to take more effort on the permitting side. It does not seem like it would be a good match or something that takes a lot less. I think you want to group them that way. With the counties in Nebraska, they are looking at relatively close proximity, 20 miles-ish. And similar bridge sizes. We don't try to mix too many pipes and steel bridges.


Sphere is another question. Thank you for that response. There is another question in the chat pod. This is a common question or issue that I guess comes up, particularly for large projects. Even in your case, your bundling projects are less -- you're supposed to do separate ones, there is less construction contracts. That means is there less contractors getting work and more people are not getting work. I think you discuss this in the past. Maybe Nebraska had a similar situation. Do you have similar feedback?


The contract industry was very concerned when proposing this. As it has turned out, it's been beneficial for them because the bundles are small enough that any of our contractors can do any of these bundles. These are not humongous bundles. These are not 100 bridges across the state and quadrant of state. These are nine bridges. Any contractor can handle any of these projects. So that's not a problem. As far as the selection, the counties submit the proposals prior to design. There is no contractor at that point, if the proposal is awarded funding, then the county goes to preengineering, engineering and into electoral electric construction. All of these look like County bridges. We are doing things just like the counties are doing. They are leading their own projects, but then the state is paying for a little more than half of the construction cost.


Thank you. The answer to that kind of question is it depends on your state and industry, if you have enough contractors and how the contract is structured. Operator, were there any questions on the phone line?


No phone questions at this time.


Thank you. Thank you, Mark. I love your bridge, your way as a model. I think what is so impressive that Nebraska has done is how you have made it easy and simple to participate. The communication you did with your county by Nebraska D.O.T.. It's very impressive. And also how you made adjustments, the program has advanced from what you have learned presentation of those on the line, participants will have another opportunity to ask questions. Mark, you will stick with us?


I'll stay on the line and be available later.


Awesome. If you have questions for Mark, we can ask at the end of the presentation. Before I turn this over to our second set of poll questions., Where could you use help? What type of resources are beneficial to you and or your agency? And in question four, some questions that are being asked, but what are the factors in making your business decision? There is probably more I can add to this list. We will give it a minute here or so for people to enter responses. Click regional workshops. Hopefully by the summer for the fall, get back in person meetings. More and more people, especially guys, guys have a full beard now. No one shaves anymore. All right. Another 15 or so seconds and I can open it back up at the end. 15 or more seconds to get your responses in. Regional workshops we are taking note of that. It's the second most popular case study. We had a lot of great case studies. 25 or 26 have gone on this rollout. We will talk about those later. Great, thank you for that response you put on the survey questions, that helps us an awful lot.


We just heard from a state D.O.T. on how state and local counties have a program. Now what we will hear about is how a city public works manager took the initiative and the lead to work with some cities regarding pavement. Jason, it's all yours.


Hello. My name is Jason Spencer. I am with the city of Oakwood in Hall County, Georgia. Northeast Georgia outside of the metro area of Atlanta. Just some work that we have done locally on a city to city level, or a small city. Our limit population is a little over 4000. We have daytime work and college population of around 30,000. And by partnering with other small cities, we are able to achieve goals we have set on our paving contracts. With that, we will go through our presentation outlines.


Looking at the introduction and background, budgeting, back in "07, we started a program for project management were small cities don't have pavement management programs that go long-term, other than into the next year as far as what roads we would pay first. And usually what categories those roads fall in. Was the worst road, what will be fixed this year? That can get you into the most expensive way of treating your roads, if you are not incorporating for maintenance and long-term planning. We took on a project, took inventory of all of our roads and started shooting long-term projections of maintaining our roads. And not doing the worst first, but it's doing all the methods. Preventative methods in place recycling when possible. With that, our network replacement cost is about 21 million. Not much for a small city of .2 centerline miles. With the program we developed, that we need to send annually, 2% of that just to maintain our roads status quo. As you can see there, we need to budget around 440,000 annually to maintain our city streets. When it comes to bidding contract challenges with this amount as compared to other counties and state projects, you are dealing with millions. It was difficult getting very many contractors to bid on some of our projects. We had anywhere from 1 to 3 contractors, typical what you would see on our beds. The biggest problem is we wanted to be environmentally minded. We wanted to be more in place recycling. Hot in place recycling and in the city. So, program purpose provides comprehensive package partnering with other small cities, bundling room projects, increase in material quantities, more contractors to bid on projects.


Our goals were to reduce cost and maintain our system. Expands treatment methods, assist other cities with their projects and treatments. All they know is they have a bad road, I need it fixed. How and what material and what treatment method is not always on their radar, other than just mill it and pays it. We help them with deciding which roads to pay and which treatment to use. We provide a single entity to issue task orders and receive billing. So as the city of Oakwood initiating a program, we act as the contracting authority on behalf of all the other cities. And the plan meets everyone's budget.


Overview project selection and mapping, pavement condition assessment, policy verifications, estimates, projects into a single bid document.


And project selection, we just ask everyone give us your roads, what is the length and width. What type of work are you looking for, milling inlay, overlay, crack sealing? And provide some sort of mapping of other streets of where they are at.


Pavement condition assessment. As I said before, not all cities know the deterioration's, the deterioration's of asphalt. So if they ask for assistance, we are more than glad to help and go out and evaluate the road and see what the PCI, pavement condition index is, and help them with a recommendation. If they think we would just like to do a mill and inlay, but they have underlying issues of pumping, I might recommend and say well, you can do that but the road will not last for three or four years and we will be back to the same problem you have now. I recommend a full declaration or a deep patch depending on how bad the pumping is. We help them with that.


Verify quantities. We want to make sure the lengths and widths and the square footage or linear footage that they are providing is correct. Treatment method, everything is clearly marked if it is just patchwork. Asphalt packs and fitness is, they want to do just an overlay. Is it a 9.5 mill overlay? Is it an industrial area and you want to go to inches with a 12 five overlay? So, questions that we ask when we prepare our big contracts.


The nice thing is for the cities that participate, we do this in-house as it is. They know how much they have on their budget for paving. How much is the repair cost? We can help them with that. We will pool line item costs from the previous year we have had and give them an estimate of what they will be looking at on their particular project. So there is no deprive. If the answer do I have a half a mile road I need to fix, but I only have $100,000 if this comes back at 250, then there is an issue there. They will have to pull that road, another street or reevaluate what kind of treatment they want to use.


We compile on all the projects into single bid documents. Everyone will review it. And make sure everything looks good before we put it out to bid. The bid package kind of looks like this. There is the bid package we put out. Here is project scope from three cities. The type of work that they wanted to get done. Once we verify the quantities type of material to be used, we will combine all of that into the bid schedule. We combine all the quantities, whether it is gallons, square yards or lineal foot depending on the treatment and material used. Then, the bid goes out. Once the bid is received, you can see on this one, I think it was five bidders for this particular package. Each one, the unit line items as you can see and overall total bids. Of course, we do low bed. So, the low bid on this contract. We will extrapolate from each city there unit cost per line item. I can see for the city of Oakland, we are 475,000 in the city of Clermont is just shy of 70,000. That is how we extrapolate all of the costs per city. We take that back to them, show them the bids and make sure everyone is still good with what they have submitted. There we go. With the success of the program, with the cities on a local level, we are now working with our county. Our counties have done something a little different. Instead of doing annual bid contracts, they are doing two to three year bid contract with one contractor. We reached out to them and there was a way to include local municipalities. I recommend this for the county agencies that are listening today. I know we get busy doing our, in our work together, getting out to bid and everything. But adding a few words to the bid package for the county and/or its municipalities, your smaller municipalities can participate and get their roads paved without having to submit their own beds. They can tie in their line item quantities. They can use your 9.5 mill overlay quantities time and get that work done without having to do separate packages. We are working with our county to do that. That way we can all benefit. The whole point of it is, the more work that you can see, the more contractors and more competitive bidding you will get. That was the whole focus for us. We took the lead on this. We reached out to the other city because for us to get better pricing, we know we needed more quantity. We reached out and said hey, do you have paving projects to do this year? Is it like to do a joint bid projects to get better pricing. It has worked for us on the local to local level. It works well. Going from one to three bids on an individual bid project, we have seen anywhere from 5 to 7 bids on a joint project. In summary, better competitive pricing. On tracks participation is up. It gives us access to in-place recycling, which is good. We have done several joint projects and in full depth recommendation. Lessons learned, yes, you do want to have a simple IGA, intergovernmental agreement. Make sure all participants provide accurate information. Have contractor verify quantities before they start. And other cities need to understand is showing task orders as we act as contracting authority, reaching the task orders. We issue billing and gets the reimbursement back from the city.


Without, that is my presentation. I hope it was helpful and I am open to any questions.


Thank you, Jason. If anyone has questions for Jason, please enter them in the tripod or over the phone. Operator, those instructions were Star one, is that correct?


Correct, start one.


Jason, thank you for a great presentation. You have great insight. We love to see the county moving forward and opening up to other types of work types. That is great advice for other counties. The fact that you had clear purpose and goals established is impressive in your leadership and initiative is also very impressive. My question, how receptive are the other cities when you reached out to them? Was there any hesitation or major hurdles that you had to overcome?


No. Once I sat down with and explained what we were trying to do, for the most part they were on board because they struggle with the same issue on pricing for a lot of them, I found, would depend on the contractor for recommendations on fixing a road. That is like handing the check card to your contractor, which is not always the best thing to do. But they are limiting on resources on how to fix your road. Best treatments. So, they were very receptive. And I think they had been well satisfied with their results. And the quantities and the price sharing.


That is great to hear. Sometimes it just takes good leadership to ask the question to reach out on neighboring localities. I don't see questions here. We will go a little bit over. I hope you can stay on if you want to run through resources available for you to help your agencies. The more we will we will wrap this up. If you do want to stay on the line, we are more than glad to stay on and answer questions. At this point, I am going to turn this over to Romeo. We are going to go through some resources that are available.


Yes, these next few slides will list project bundling resources. For starters, there are two websites that have significant information on project bundling. We have our EDC five website. That can also take you to the next link, which is the office of innovative program delivery. Within the second website, there is a bundle facilities oversight, which has a lot of information on project bundling. Next slide, please. Here is what we considered a support for you during project bundling. We have workshops, which are a day and a half in length, they can be virtual or in person. Likewise. Changes. Those are also hand in hand. Offer technical target assistance in 40 hour blocks. Presentations local regional and national events for available duties. Webinar series that was presented for you here today. Case studies, how to read the development. And other tools and resources. For example, we have a supplement guidebook. We have how to, college lecture course. Also, there is a web-based training course based on the bundling guidebook for local agencies which will be available very soon. What else would you like to see that would help you in implementing project bundling in a greater way? We will see what we can provide. Next slide. And we have some funding opportunities. We have the state transportation innovation Council. The consenting program provides up to $100,000 per student per year for standardized innovation. We also have our accelerated innovation deployment a ID demonstration program which offers up to $1 million available for you to deploy an innovation that will be introduced. Next slide. And we have some innovation deployment news to subscribe to. We have our weekly newsletter, EDC news. And we have our bimonthly magazine "Innovator." and we have some links here as well. That is all I have. Thank you very much, Dan?


Thank you, Romeo. I know as a former state D.O.T., we took advantage of both the grants and the a ID demonstration to advance some of these initiatives. Please talk to your state D.O.T. and make sure to take advantage of that. Just to wrap up here, if you haven't already and you do want a certificate, please make sure your email is in the chat pod that indicates so. Let me know. I also failed to mention, I believe, there is a download pod and presentation and documents that Jason shared from Oakwood, Georgia. They are all available for downloading. So, there is the technical assistance flyer. And the webinar series flyer is also in there. These links shown here are in that flyer if you missed the first three webinars in the series. And you started out with showing great examples of non-bridgework types where we showed paving, ADA ramps, intersection safety improvements. It was really taken advantage of to help out agencies. The second one was on factors or things to consider to become a lead agency. You are self-evaluation tool and database of resources available to help you. In November we did making the business case. We explained, we did case studies to show how agencies made the case for project bundling. We hope to see everybody next month on January 20th. We are going to do how to's. How to do project bundling and how you get into doing it. If you haven't heard of their efforts, maybe you can take advantage of using our machine learning to figure out the best ways to bundle. There is impressive work being done there. That will be the focus of the January 20th webinar. I think that wraps it up. I am willing to stay on if anyone has more questions for David, myself, or remail, Mark from Nebraska or Jason.


Hey, Dan?


Go ahead, David.


As we close, I just wanted to reiterate that a message for LPA's is partnering. You heard a lot of good examples of how you can have significant savings if you take a little leadership to work on some of the stumbling blocks. That seems very doable, like intergovernmental agreement standardized respects and things like that. Also, devotees are often open to partnering with you. You heard about Nebraska and other cases where D.O.T.'s were willing to provide some of that facilitation in the interest of everybody benefiting with cost savings, as well as addressing system issues, bridge issues or pavement issues. We also, I think you sell remail mentioned, we have targeted technical assistance where we can provide 40 hours of technical assistance through an agency that wants to implement bundling. We would really like to have a good, you know, try to use that and help folks think about how to overcome some of these hurdles we heard about. Finally, please contact us. Appreciate everybody participating today.


Also if I could ask for the presenters to stay on. I think AT&T will pull us out so we can do a closeout for just a second. That's it for me, Dan.


Thank you. Good closing comments. For Mayo, do you have anything? Otherwise, I think we can wrap up the meeting.


I am good, Dan, thank you.


Thank you everybody for taking the time. Please have a safe and healthy holiday season. We hope to see you for the January webinar. Thank you.


Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference for today. Thank you for using the AT&T teleconference service. You may now disconnect.


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